IKEA is a notable Swedish international home furnishings retailer.

  
General overview

The company distributes its goods through its retail outlets. Those outlets sell contemporary furniture; IKEA is unique in that most of its furniture and accessories are made with the idea that the consumer assembles the goods themselves.

The chain has 235 stores in 34 countries; most of them in Europe, the rest in the United States, Canada, Asia and Australia. More than 20 stores opened during 2005. IKEA is one of the few store chains to have locations both in Israel and in other Middle Eastern nations.

IKEA is generally pronounced (IPA /i'ke.a/) but in many English-speaking regions, it is pronounced (IPA /ai 'ki:ə/) rhyming with the word "idea".

The IKEA Catalogue, containing about 12,000 products, is printed in 160 million copies (2006) worldwide, and distributed free of charge, through mail and stores worldwide.

History

IKEA was founded in Älmhult, Sweden in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, then 17. The company name is a composite of the first letters in his name in addition to the first letters of the names of the property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd. This acronym is incidentally similar to the Greek word οικία [oikia] (home) and to the Finnish word oikea (correct, right).

Originally, IKEA sold pens, wallets, picture frames, table runners, watches, jewelry and nylon stockings or practically anything Kamprad found a need for that he could fill with a product at a reduced price. Furniture was first added to the IKEA product range in 1947 and, in 1955, IKEA began to design its own furniture. The company motto is: "Affordable Solutions for Better Living".

At first, Kamprad sold his goods out of his home and by mail order, but eventually a store was opened in the nearby town of Älmhult. It was also the location for the first IKEA "warehouse" store which came to serve as a model for IKEA establishments elsewhere and on March 23, 1963, the first store outside Sweden was opened in Asker, a Norwegian municipality outside Oslo. (The store was located in the same building which houses the Bellevue hotel, about two km from the present site at Billingstad/Slependen, which opened in 1975. The store in Asker is currently undergoing a major expansion and remodeling.)

Products

IKEA furniture is well known for its modern, utilitarian design. Also, because much of it is self-assembly furniture (also known as "flat-pack"), it is designed to be assembled by the consumer rather than being sold pre-assembled. IKEA claims this permits them to reduce costs and use of packaging by not shipping air; the volume of a bookcase, for example, is considerably less if it is shipped unassembled rather than assembled. This is also a practical point for many of the chain's European customers, where mass transit is commonly used; the flat-pack distribution methods allows for easier transport via mass transit from the store to a customer's home for assembly.

IKEA contends that it has been a pioneering force in sustainable approaches to mass consumer culture. Kamprad refers to the concept as "democratic design," meaning that the company applies an integrated approach to manufacturing and design (see also environmental design). In response to the explosion of human population and material expectations in the 20th and 21st century, the company implements economies of scale, capturing material streams and creating manufacturing processes that hold costs and resource use down, such as the extensive use of particle board. The intended result is flexible, adaptable home furnishings, scalable both to larger homes and smaller dwellings.

IKEA has also expanded their product base to include flat-pack houses, in an effort to cut prices involved in a first-time buyer's home. The product, named BoKlok was launched in Sweden in 1996 in a joint venture with Skanska. Now working in the Nordic countries and in UK, sites confirmed in England include London, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.

Product Names

IKEA products are identified by single word names. Most of the names are either Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Norwegian in origin. Although there are some notable exceptions, most product name are based on a special naming system developed by IKEA.

    * Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames (for example: Klippan)
    * Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian placenames
    * Dining tables and chairs: Finnish placenames
    * Bookcase ranges: Occupations
    * Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays
    * Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names
    * Chairs, desks: men’s names
    * Materials, curtains: women’s names
    * Garden furniture: Swedish islands
    * Carpets: Danish placenames
    * Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, sailors’ language
    * Bedlinen, bedcovers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones
    * Children’s items: mammals, birds, adjectives
    * Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms
    * Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions
    * Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish placenames

For example, DUKTIG (meaning: good, well-behaved) is a line of children's toys, OSLO is a name of a bed, JERKER ( a Swedish man's name) is a popular desk, DINERA for tableware, KASSETT for media storage. One range of office furniture is named EFFEKTIV.

A notable exception is the IVAR shelving system, which dates back to the early 70's. This item is named after the item's designer.

Company founder Ingvar Kamprad, who is dyslexic, found that naming the furniture with proper names and words, rather than a product code, made the names easier to remember.

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